It seems everything can be optimized these days. But sometimes it still isn't enough.

You have to do more!

I even received a Power Balance Bracelet that promises to optimize my physical abilities. Optimization is the key (and the keyword) for SEO, social media, and also best practices in public relations optimization (PRO).

If optimized, public relations and social media can be an influential boost to SEO and search marketing.

If content is king, we could say PR is the king’s queen; what a better match?! A typical PR team is already putting out rich content such as press releases, photo releases, videos, blog posts, and social media updates.

If you haven't already, it’s time to connect the dots between PR, social media, and SEO because as competition gets SEO-smarter, the stream of online content continues to flood through the online gates.

As social signals to search and SEO have already been confirmed by Google, Bing, and recent findings from SEOmoz on ranking factors. All signs point to a definite correlation between popular content, likes, and shares. It’s a fair assessment that social media can't be ignored from an online PR or SEO standpoint.

How can you maximize the PRO PR optimization efforts?

Titles, Descriptions and Body Text

Bruce Clay said it at SES Toronto’s solo session, SEO 101, and it needs repeating it: Titles are just as important as body text. The titles and descriptions are what influences a searcher to click and convert to a qualified visitor.

From an online PR world, make sure headlines, sub-headlines, and body text are solid with actionable and SEO savvy keywords and links.

Online PR Play with Video!

It seems that optimizing a video is just not enough these days. According to Greg Jarboe and Jonathan Allen’s panel at SES Toronto, optimization is just covering the basics when it comes to online video. One of my tweets from #SESTO:“Crazy video stats: 48+ hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, 30% of all the videos get 99% of the views #sesto @gregjarboe”

New video strategies introduced at SES Toronto included the latest ways to actually create YouTube videos without a camera. YouTube now offers four new ways to do just that:

GoAnimate lets you create easy animated videos.

One True Media offers fast and easy video editing.

Xtranormal lets you turn anything you type into a fully-animated CG movie.

Stupeflix Video Maker enables you to tell a story with your digital content.

Adding killer video to press releases has never been easier!

Social PR and Images

It’s SEO smart to have your images optimized, but it is also PR smart to pick eye-catching visuals that stand out in blog posts, Facebook posts, tweets, and press release distributions.

Check off the optimization part with alt tags, file names, titles and descriptions. But take time in image selection and make sure you control the image that shows when people Like or Share your post on Facebook.

How self defeating is it when an image of the RSS logo at the bottom of your website or blog shows up instead of the image that goes with the content? It’s the equivalent to running an ad with the wrong artwork. The Open Grapher plugin for WordPress allows you to control which video or image shows up in Facebook with each like.

Local PR and Google Places

Take control of your Google Places. From a public relations perspective this is the equivalent to free editorial space on page one of Google that you control, can continuously add to and monitor. Maximize the PR potential with logos, photos, videos, and reviews.

PR Meet Social Media Meet SEO

PR is pretty, social media is fun, and SEO is tricky. That was then and this is now. Today the PR, social media, and SEO departments need to merge, converge, and work in tandem for optimal online results and ROI.

About the author

Author of "Social PR Secrets" and named one of the top 40 Digital Strategists for 2013, Lisa Buyer is passionate and ambitious about how public relations, social media, and SEO influence each other.

She is President and CEO of The Buyer Group, an interactive public relations and social agency located in Celebration, Florida and editor for Social #PR Chat covering trends in Social PR, Mobile PR, Brand PR and SEO PR.

She is also a columnist with Search Engine Watch and a regular speaker at PubCon, SES, and part of the @ClickZ faculty, most recently becoming an instructor of the University of San Francisco’s online Advanced Social Media certificate program.